The government, considering when to impose a costly new customs bureaucracy, announced last week that now is not the right time. Post-Brexit checks on goods entering Britain from the EU were first supposed to be implemented in January 2021. After serial postponements, they were due to begin next month. Now it won’t happen before 2024.
Goods moving in the other direction are already subject to customs paperwork, making life difficult for UK exporters and pushing some out of business altogether. Ministers have recognised that British consumers and businesses could do without the same penalty being applied to imports. The government admits that import checks would stoke inflation. This is a quiet acknowledgment that friction between the UK and the trading bloc on its doorstep is a drag on the economy. But Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, cannot say so aloud because that would concede the folly of quitting the single market in the first place. » | Editorial | Sunday, September 3, 2023
Brexit was, is, and will forever remain a STUPID decision – a decision which has already inflicted, is inflicting, and will forever continue to inflict unnecessary ECONOMIC PAIN on this nation and its people. That Rishi Sunak was, and continues to be, an arch-proponent of this ACT OF ECONOMIC SELF-HARM is as surprising as it is unfathomable. – © Mark Alexander
